US officials and representatives of the Board of Peace are preparing a field survey and mapping operation inside the Gaza Strip to identify suitable locations where Hamas members would hand over their weapons under US President Donald Trump's 20-point plan. Walla reported Tuesday that it had learned of the preparations. Notice who's choosing the sites: surveyors, officials, a board with a lofty name. Nobody in the story asks Gaza’s residents where they’d put the guns—or whether they want them gone at all.
The Bargain Over Rubble
The deal on the table trades weapons for reconstruction. Under Hamas's original demands, the organization would hand its weapons to a third party, which would safeguard them inside the Gaza Strip in return for commitments on reconstruction and an Israeli withdrawal. In other words, the group that rules Gaza by force wants to keep its arsenal stored locally and get paid for it. Washington wants to move the process faster. Israeli defense officials, Walla reports, say they’re confused by the American approach, especially Washington’s push to accelerate steps that appear to run counter to developments on the ground.
Security officials familiar with the regional process describe an enormous gap between Hamas's conduct and US aspirations to advance reconstruction in exchange for surrendered weapons. One official put it bluntly: “If two months ago Hamas was still trying to create a false impression that it was willing to disarm, now it is not even doing that, and it is investing its efforts in preparing for a return to fighting.” So Washington’s state-builders are drawing maps for a handover ceremony, while officials in Jerusalem say the other party has stopped pretending it will show up.
Daily Killing, Quietly Logged
Military officials told Walla the Strip is now closer to escalation than to reconstruction or a negotiated arrangement. They cited efforts by Hamas's military wing to rebuild its capabilities, ongoing training exercises, attempts to provoke clashes with IDF troops along the Yellow Line, and intelligence warnings about planned attacks, including concerns about attacks in the run-up to Israel's elections meant to influence the results.
Read that last part again. Even the threat assessment revolves around an election calendar. Armed men stand on one side of a line, an army on the other, and leaders on both sides apparently count votes while counting bodies.
Meanwhile, the IDF and Shin Bet carry out an average of two to three targeted operations a day against Hamas operatives and commanders in Gaza. Officials say some of those targeted took part in the October 7 attacks; others are organizing attacks or trying to cross the Yellow Line. The article offers no civilian casualty figures and names nobody. It doesn’t say who else stood nearby. That absence follows the same pattern: the apparatus reports its own activity in tidy daily averages.
Who Gets a Say
According to assessments in Jerusalem, Israel will oppose reconstruction measures unless Hamas is disarmed in practice and Gaza is demilitarized, including the removal of terrorist infrastructure, weapons, and terrorists. Reconstruction is therefore a bargaining chip held by a state, to be released when a rival armed organization gives up its rifles. The Board of Peace brokers. Hamas stalls. The IDF strikes. Everyone in the chain has a title, a mandate, or a gun.
The article contains no voice from a displaced family, a mutual aid kitchen, or a neighborhood committee. It doesn’t say what Gaza’s residents want built or whom they’d trust to build it. Instead, it describes a field survey, a mapping operation, and a 20-point plan, none of them apparently drafted by the people whose homes are the subject of the negotiation.
Officials will map the weapons, vet the locations, and brief one another. A Gaza family’s roof still depends on whether anyone can be found to babysit the arsenal of the men who govern them.